Gapers Block published from April 22, 2003 to Jan. 1, 2016. The site will remain up in archive form. Please visit Third Coast Review, a new site by several GB alumni.
✶ Thank you for your readership and contributions. ✶
Friday, March 29
Today, amateur and professional cyclists will tear around Grant Park in downtown Chicago (205 E. Randolph St.) in the first-ever Chicago Criterium. The racing starts at a bright-and-early 7:30 a.m. and continues a day long, finishing with the Pro 1/2 race at 2:25 p.m. Try to snag a spot at the start/finish line at Buckingham Fountain and see racers sprint by at speeds topping 35 m.p.h.
Melissa Culbertson's work has recently appeared in Flyway, Windows, Pebble Lake Review, Barn Owl Review, Wicked Alice and [GROWLING SOFTLY] from Juliet Cook's Blood Pudding Press. Her debut chapbook, the fire-wife, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press and should be hot and ready this August! She also co-edits the online literary journal blossombones. Artist and poet Lauren Levato is the author of two chapbooks, Marriage Bones
and at the hotel andromeda, a collaborative text/visual project with Kristy Bowen. 7 p.m. 1564 N. Milwaukee Ave. For more info, visit the Website.
Avant/Chicago presents Agents of Change, Denise Hradecky and Needers & Givers for one night of musical majesty. Come to Silvies for outstanding music and cheap beer. Getting drunk on Sunday night is the thing to do. Hangover cure upon request. Show starts around 8:00.
As part of its annual meeting in Chicago this week, the American Cheese Society will be holding a free, open to the public sale of specialty cheeses today in the dining room of Kendall College at 900 N. North Branch Street today from 10am to 1pm.
Wicker Park Fest invades, um, Wicker Park (the actual park) yesterday and today with dozens of indie rock bands. $5 gets you in. Here's today's lineup:
Subterranean stage
2:25pm: Aleks & The Drummer
3:30pm: Kid, You’ll Move Mountains
4:35pm: The Most Serene Republic
5:40pm: Film School
6:45pm: Maps & Atlases
7:55pm: Red Sparowes
9pm: Isis
Smoke Daddy stage
2pm: Algernon
3pm: Company of Thieves
4pm: Van Ghost
5pm: TBD
6pm: Dub Trio
7pm: Charlie Hunter Trio
8:45pm: Bob Schneider
It's time again for one of the city's biggest book fairs. With over 100,000 donated books in 60 categories, the Newberry Library Book Fair is sure to offer something for everyone and for a good price, too - most books are priced under $2. Check the website for a list of some of the more random things you'll find at this year's fair. Free admission; 10pm-6pm at 60 W. Walton. Call 312-943-9090 for general information.
3175 N. Broadway
9:00pm $15
Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. In their recordings and live performances over the last nine years, Matmos have used the sounds of: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, water hitting copper plates, the runout groove of a vinyl record, a $5.00 electric guitar, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, violins, rat cages, tanks of helium, violas, human skulls, cellos, peck horns, tubas, cards shuffling, field recordings of conversations in hot tubs, frequency response tests for defective hearing aids, a steel guitar recorded in a sewer, electrical interference generated by laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions and balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones on a dinner plate, Polish trains, insects, ukelele, aspirin tablets hitting a drum kit from across the room, dogs barking, people reading aloud, life support systems and inflatable blankets, records chosen by the roll of dice, an acupuncture point detector conducting electrical current through human skin, rock salt crunching underfoot, solid gold coins spinning on bars of solid silver, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal.